Three years. Six revolutions. Nine women. Fighting for peace in a state of war.

MediaStorm partnered with the award-winning team at The Trials of Spring, a major cross media event that tells the stories of nine women on the front lines of change in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, to build a website showcasing its short films and design a digital distribution and social media strategy.

The Trials of Spring launched as a special event on The New York Times homepage on Sunday, June 7, 2015: six shorts in six days culminating with the World Premiere of the feature documentary at the 2015 Human Rights Watch Film Festival on Friday, June 12, 2015.

MediaStorm designed and built the project’s website and leveraged The MediaStorm Platform to package and distribute the short films. It also developed a digital distribution outreach and social media engagement strategy for the online component of the project. Our social media campaign, anchored by #DoWomensVoicesMatter and robust outreach, has helped the Trials of Spring launch a major, international conversation about the role of women in peacemaking efforts around the world.

Our partnership yielded excellent results: we reached out to over 150 international and domestic media outlets, thought leaders, NGOs, and other influencers to share the message of the Trials of Spring and gain significant resposts of the content. Our social media campaign engaged thousands of viewers and led them to take action--demanding that women’s voices be included in peacemaking and nation building efforts.

Fork Films and the entire team behind The Trials of Spring needed a toolset to maximize its global reach; design and present the stories in an intelligent way; and deliver information that would engage and inform audiences. Its goal was to provide an immersive experience that reframes the narrative of the role women have and can play in social change around the world.

MediaStorm’s Digital Strategy and Technology Teams leveraged our experiences to provide both the toolset and framework for developing an engaging digital experience for The Trials of Spring.

Design Cinematic Experiences: Given the filmmaking talents and experiences of the project’s team, it was important that the stories be presented beautifully and coherently online, both individually and as a package. The MediaStorm Platform allowed the team to create a cinematic feel in the presentation of the material and interactive entry points to each story.

Drive Smart Distribution: As an awareness-raising project, the team was committed to getting the stories out to important audiences in the U.S., the MENA region, and other countries with a large Arab diaspora, such as France. The Platform is ideally poised to meet this goal through several of its features; including its trackable embed capability and elegant solution to multi-language subtitling. Using the MediaStorm Player, we reached out to over 100 news organizations, blogger, NGOs, industry and other influencers to embed the Player with the stories.

Engage Audiences: The Trials of Spring is first and foremost an opportunity to inspire people to take action on issues raised in the films. The team built a call to action to the Player directing viewers to a petition on change.org--requesting President Obama to meet include more women in the 2015 Summit to Counter Violent Extremism. The Player is a key tactic in the film’s Advocacy Campaign, which seeks to gain 100,000 signatures in 30 days - a goal that is clearly facilitated by the Player.

MediaStorm built on its proven track-record as an independent distributor of films that give voice and meaning to matters of global importance to promote The Trials of Spring. For this effort, MediaStorm and its partners, including Fork Films, Peace is Loud, and The New York Times, identified and engaged media outlets, NGOs, thought leaders, and media influencers to interact with and intelligently promote the content to its audiences.

In preparation for the digital rollout of the initiative’s short film series, MediaStorm collaborated with the project’s producers to determine the overall tone of outreach messaging and developed a social media presence that furthered the initiative’s mission to reframe the conversation around the Arab uprisings, centering the stories of these courageous women. We then honed that message through a central #--Do Women’s Voices Matter?

Establishing a social media presence early on helped us identify existing conversations and media influencers that could be leveraged during the film roll outs. MediaStorm’s responsibilities included:

Establishing social media best practices: The MediaStorm team collaborated with the film’s producers to develop do’s and don’ts to help team members and partners navigate the contentious topics the project explores online.

Building consistent brand identity: Our motion graphics and design team worked with our digital strategists to establish a consistent brand identity for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and newsletters. This included designing headers and templates evocative of the initiative’s filmmaking style.

Researching social landscape: The digital team researched events and milestone tie-ins that could be leveraged for film promotion. Implementing our social media content strategy ahead of the film’s release allowed us to build a loyal audience and discover niche outlets and social accounts active in the Arab women activism space. The social presence contextualizes the short films in current events and broader women’s rights issues.

Developing and Executing a Comprehensive Social Media Campaign: Over on year of research culminated in our executing a comprehensive and robust social media campaign. We created and leveraged original assets; developed engaging and interactive experiences for our followers, and reframed the narrative around the role of women in peacemaking.

The results of this work will be documented following the release of the six short films in the June 2015.